“Apple Inc.’s iPad-fueled cash pile, the largest in corporate America, is now almost double that of No. 2 Microsoft Corp.,” The Associated Press reports.
“The five U.S. companies with the largest cash stockpiles accounted for $276 billion, or 22 percent, of non-financial corporate cash balances last year, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service,” AP reports. “Apple led the pack with $97.6 billion in cash, followed by Microsoft Corp. with $51.74 billion and Cisco Systems Inc. with $46.74 billion. Google Inc. came in fourth with $44.63 billion and Pfizer Inc. finished out the top five with $35.25 billion, Moody’s said.”
AP reports, “Unless Apple changes its cash philosophy and starts buying back stock or paying a dividend, the company could account for about $150 billion, or 12 percent, of total corporate cash by itself by the end of this year, up from $97 billion, or 8 percent, at the end of 2011.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: By now, in mid-March, Apple has more than double Microsoft’s cash.
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I was thinking yesterday that this could happen in about a month. I think they were about 23Bil. apart. Wow, it took 1 day
Cash on-hand, not market value.
Microsoft is no slouch in the cash generation department, except that it depletes its cash pile by paying dividends, something that Apple does not do.
The Windows & Office franchise throws off cash in spectacular gushes and is very profitable for Microsoft which is why Windows 8 will never tackle the tablet market seriously because Microsoft will never do anything to jeopardise the PC side of the business.
I am not one to be combative. However, in this case…. Go on home your Moma’s calling you. Why is it that a left hairy scrotum sack like yourself, FEELS AAPL is obligated to pay a dividend? Every ANAList under the sun KNOWS WHAT IS BEST FOR APPLE AND IT’S “Cash Hoard” Go away you smell like FaMunda. Good GRIEF! Envy or just jealousy? Windoze 8…. Yeah OK!
Wow. Troll.
BLN is here for comic relief. And he’s a nut. not a scrotum. If he was a scrotum, he would contain 2 nuts.
Unless you have abnormal anatomy you would know that.
Your reply was totally uncalled for. BLN didn’t say anything about AAPL paying a dividend. He talked only about what MSFT does.
Maybe Apple is trying to save us from a government that is freely printing money.
Uhm Microsoft ALSO has $12B of DEBT on their balance sheet. I’d net that out of their $21.7B in cash before comparing it to Apple’s cash pile.
The diaper wearing, rabid drooling fan boys here do not understand that Apple’s cash is 100% OWNED by the actual OWNERS of APPLE. This cash is NOT Tim Cook’s or any other corporate executive of Apple. The people who OWN Apple own this cash and have EVERY LAST RIGHT to this cash.
If Apple is so poorly run as a company that they simply cannot exist without 100 billion in cash lying around then god help them. It takes enormous resources to account for so much cash, manage so much cash so that it returns some value, minimizes taxes, etc. Enormous resources.
In the Steve Job book of secrets he left behind it makes no mention of what Apple should or should not do should they be in the position to have more cash than Microsoft is worth.
What? This comment make absolutely no sense. Apple had more cash than Microsoft long before Steve Jobs died.